Hostages perished from gas?

Have hostages perished from gas that was used by units of special
forces?

PAP 26/20/2002 PAP is official Polish Press Agency

The Ekho Moskvy radion station announced on Suturday in the
afternoon, that the majority of dead casualties among the hostages
were't not killed by terrorists, but have choked on their own vomit
as the consequence of using poisonous gas by special forces.

The radio station cites Valery Tsikayev, the producent of music show
Nord-Ost, who said that he was himself in the concert hall and saw
some dead bodies there. All doctors confirmed, asked by the radio
station confirm taht the hostages passed away as the result of gas
poisoning and not from bullet wounds.

About 90 dead hostages. What a solution? to the drama by the Russians. The hostage takers had started killing however as they had threatened to do. If they hadn't gone in all hotages may have been killed. Dramatic pictures of the scene in the theatre after the raid. Including women with explosives strapped on them dead in the seats they were sitting in when the Russians went in. From gas or bullets , it wasn't clear.

From ABC.com, not only has the death toll increased (and will likely continue to rise), but all save one of the hostages who has died has died from the gas...

M O S C O W, Oct. 27 Moscow's chief physician said Sunday that all but one of the 117 hostages who died during an operation to free hundreds of captives from a city theater were killed by the effects of gas used to subdue their captors.

The Interfax news agency quoted Andrei Seltsovsky as saying that one person died from bullet wounds during Saturday's assault. It was the first time that a Russian official identified the cause of death of most of the victims.

The gas left many hostages unconscious, and they had to be carried from the theater suffering from symptoms of poisoning. Authorities have not said what was in the gas.

Experts also mentioned BZ, or 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, as a possibility for the gas used by the Russians.

BZ was a research focus of the U.S. Army during the Cold War at the former Edgewood Area labs near Washington. It belongs to a class of drugs known as anticholinergics that interrupt the brain's chemical messaging system between cells, leading to confusion and hallucinations. It needs an hour to take effect, so authorities would've had to release it into the theater long before the actual assault.

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I don't expect the Russian government to be too forthcoming as to the exact nature of the agent, but I am convinced that they saved more lives from having used it.

Originally posted by immortal one I believe the Russians did what needed to be done, in order to bring the situation to an end.

As in any game, one cannot be victorious playing by the rules, when your opponent has no rules.

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The trouble is, though, that bringing the situation to an end is precisely what the Russian authorities have NOT done. By refusing to give information about the gas that was used, and by isolating the hundreds of surviving hostages from their relatives and the outside world, they are prolonging the situation, so that people are now saying: "the survivors are hostages of the Russian state."

Originally posted by immortal one I believe the Russians did what needed to be done, in order to bring the situation to an end.

As in any game, one cannot be victorious playing by the rules, when your opponent has no rules.

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What I'm seeing is the following:

The Russian gov't put an end to a hostage situation by killing all the hostage takers, 130 of the 700 hostages, and keeping the surviving hostages isolated from their families while they remain in hospitals, fighting for their lives because the gov't will NOT release the information on what exactly was in the gas mixture they used to poison everyone.

They stopped a hostage situation by killing everyone. Sure, it worked - but they didn't exactly rescue the hostages, which defeats the whole purpose of a rescue mission.

I think what the russian gov't did was send out a clear message: don't take hostages because they're not worth much to us, and we WILL kill them to get to you.

Not being a SWAT or SF type I am wondering what could be done to take out the terrorists before they set off the bombs. Not commenting by this on what they did, but I do wonder what could have been done without meeting their demands.

I did not know the bombs were not there. But did the Swat teams? You make plans on what you know or are led to believe. You attempt to verify, then you take whatever action is needed. If the police felt the bombs were there what were their choices?

However, this would have been Israelis method, infra-red monitoring of body heat and positioning. Studying the movement and the physical geographics of people, pinpointing, once again, to the captors. You then set up entry ways and targets when you storm in.